Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
The apostle Paul begins a lengthy series of commands for Christians with a simple statement: “Love must be sincere” (Romans 12:9).
Let’s define a couple of those key words. “Love” (Greek: agape) is not self-focused but others-serving. And “sincere” (anypokritos) means genuine, not hypocritical; or as the Amplified Bible says, “a real thing.”
Love is the motivating force for us to be able to carry out every one of the commands listed in verses 9-21 with God-honoring sincerity.
Love clings to what is good and drives away evil
Love is devoted to God and to its neighbor
Love honors others more than itself
Love is zealous
Love serves God in everything
Love is joyful in hope
Love is patient in affliction
Love is faithful in prayer
Love is hospitable to its neighbors
Love blesses persecutors
Love rejoices with those who rejoice
Love mourns with those who mourn
Love finds a way to live in harmony with others
Love is not proud
Love never repays evil for evil
Love always does what is right
Love lives at peace with everyone
Love doesn’t seek revenge
Love serves its enemies
Love overcomes evil with good
This is a great list—a lofty, noble, Christ-glorifying list!
How do I know if I am fulfilling these mandates? Quite simply, I could ask myself, “What does it sound like if I replace the word ‘love’ in those statements with my own name?” Do each of those statements sound accurate if I do that?
If not, that means I need to continue to offer my body as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1) so that the Holy Spirit can continue to sanctify me.
When we pray the closing words of the prayer Jesus gave us—“For Yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen!”—we are both acknowledging God’s awesomeness and we are asking for our lives to display this reality.
“He who loves iniquity does not love his fellow man, for ‘he who loves iniquity does not love, but rather hates his own soul.’ And certainly he who does not love his own soul will in no way be capable of loving the soul of another.” —Aelred of Rievaulx (1109-1167)
Steven Lee shows us the biblical principles that God forms us through failure. One passage especially stood out to me because it is a central thought to both of my books. Lee writes, “God measures success according to faithfulness: ‘One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much’ (Luke 16:10). Do we strive for success as defined by God? Are we seeking to be faithful with all that he has entrusted to us—time, talents, and treasure? Or have we adopted the lying weights and measures of our world? Will our labors result in hearing the words ‘Well done, good and faithful servant’ (Matthew 25:23)? Put aside striving for the world’s facade of perfection.”
“The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have.” —Vince Lombardi
T.M. Moore teases us with this: “The most important question we can ask guides us in answering many other questions besides, questions such as, ‘Whom should I marry?’ and ‘How can I stop wasting time?’ and ‘What’s the best way to use my wealth?’’ Any question that helps us answer those and a myriad other questions that might arise during the day must be pretty important. Indeed, it must be the most important question any of us could ask.” What is that most important question? Check out his thought-provoking answer.
“Life is not a spectator sport. If you’re going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, you’re wasting your life.” —Jackie Robinson
When God gives you a victory, write it down (see Exodus 17:14). When God gives you a promise, write it down. Then read it regularly so you don’t forget it. This will keep you grateful, it will keep you expectant, and it will keep you dependent on the victory-giving, promise-keeping God.
When we speak God things TO God about God, and when we speak good things TO God about our neighbors, then we will have good things FROM God to speak to our neighbors.
The Greek word for “bless” (eulogeo) literally means good (eu-) words (logos). We can bless people simply by saying good words to them, as well as good words about them to both God and others.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
An expert in Jewish law asked Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus, knowing this man was an expert in the law, turned the question back on him, “What do you think is written in the law about this?”
This man quoted to Jesus two passages in the mosaic law, and Jesus told him, “You have answered correctly. If you do that you will have eternal life.”
The two things he quoted were loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving your neighbor as yourself. But then comes an interesting phrase. Luke writes that, “He wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” This tells me that this expert in the law was trying to figure out the least that he could do to be approved by God.
In answer to his question, Jesus told the story that we now refer to as the parable of the good Samaritan. The Samaritan didn’t measure his love by the least he could do, and he didn’t limit himself to doing only what was comfortable or convenient. In fact, he didn’t measure his response at all—he simply did what was needed without any thought of the cost.
We often use WWJD to ask ourselves, “What would Jesus do?”
Since Jesus embodied love, maybe a more clarifying question would be WWLD—What would love do?
Maybe we could combine this with the Golden Rule. If I was in need, how would I want my neighbor to treat me? Then, as Jesus said to the expert in the law, “Go and do likewise to all your neighbors.” This is what pleases God and glorifies Jesus.
(Read this whole account for yourself in Luke 10:25-37.)
Perhaps a good prayer for us would be: Heavenly Father, I want to love the way Jesus loved. Help me to do what Love would do in all my interactions with my neighbors today. Father, be glorified in my neighborly responses today. I want to follow the example Jesus gave me, so I pray this prayer in His name. Amen.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
If we’re not careful, we can get so focused on our own appointments that we will miss out on the amazing opportunities God sends our way to show His love to others.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
I’m a bit of a nut about the exactness of words, so one of my pet peeves is the incorrect use of imply and infer. “Imply” is something I do as the speaker; “infer” is something you do as the listener. Or you might say implying is like throwing and inferring is like catching.
A big problem arises when I infer something that you didn’t imply. Or even worse, when I infer something based on something you didn’t say. People will often say something like this, “Since Jesus didn’t specifically talk about ________ then it must be okay.” In logic, this would be called an argument from ignorance: concluding that an action must be acceptable because it has not been specifically stated to be unacceptable.
Statement #10 in our series asking “Is that in the Bible?” is—Love your neighbor. Is that in the Bible? Yes!
Later on, Jesus would add to this Deuteronomy 6:5—Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength—to answer the question about the greatest commandment of all.
In Leviticus 19, the Hebrew word for love means love in the broadest sense of the word, and neighbor means a friend or a fellow citizen. Unfortunately, the rabbis inferred that someone not a Jew was therefore an enemy and therefore not worthy of love. They further inferred that the opposite of love was hate.
Matthew Henry commented, “They were willing to infer what God never designed.”
Statement #11 is—Hate your enemy. Is that in the Bible? Yes, in the fact that it appears in print in Matthew 5:43, but it doesn’t appear in the Scripture that Jesus knew. It had become so ingrained in the thinking of people that they now assumed it was in the Bible.
In many ways, the Old Testament laws were easier to live out because they were all external and easy to measure, like don’t murder or don’t sleep with someone who isn’t your spouse. But Jesus made it a heart issue—He said lust is the same as adultery and hate is the same as murder.
Jesus also made love for enemies a heart issue. The word He used for love in the Greek is agape—the same word describing God’s love for His enemies in John 3:16—For God so LOVED the world, that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him would not perish but would have everlasting life.
Jesus said our enemies were really our neighbors and were worthy of sacrificial love because they, too, were loved by God.
Matthew 5:44 is shortened in the NIV and has a footnote explaining that the longer verse was not seen in the earlier manuscripts. But given the fact that Jesus demonstrated everything found in the longer version of this verse, I think we are safe in using it. So let’s look at the response Jesus calls us to from the NKJV: But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.
Here’s what Jesus says it means for us to love our enemies:
(2) Help the haters. Jesus said we are to do those things that are beautiful and excellent—like the Good Samaritan did for his enemy-turned-neighbor (see Luke 10:25-37).
(3) Pray for the persecutors. Talk to God about them; don’t talk to others about them.
This response from Christians toward people whom others would call an enemy is totally unexpected by the world. This unexpected response will begin to draw enemies toward Jesus (1 Peter 2:12). If we will treat enemies and neighbors, they may soon become brothers and sisters in the family of God!
When the world hits us Christians out of hate, let’s respond with unexpected love: blessing those who curse us, helping those who hurt us, and praying for those who persecute us.
“When we reflect how prone we are to be drawn into error in our judgments, and into vice in our practice; and how unable, at least how very unwilling, to espy or correct our own miscarriages; when we consider how apt the world is to flatter us in our faults, and how few there are so kind as to tell us the truth; what an inestimable privilege must it be to have a set of true, judicious, hearty friends about us, continually watching over our souls, to inform us where we have fallen, and to warn us that we fall not again for the future.” —George Whitefield
“This was the staple preaching of [George] Whitefield. He was always great upon that which he called the great R—Regeneration. Whenever you heard him, the three Rs came out clearly—Ruin, Regeneration, and Redemption! Man ruined, wholly ruined, hopelessly, helplessly, eternally ruined! Man regenerated by the Spirit of God, and by the Spirit of God alone wholly made a new creature in Christ! Man redeemed by precious blood from all his sins, not by works of righteousness, not by deeds of the law, not by ceremonies, prayers, or resolutions, but by the precious blood of Christ!” —Charles Spurgeon
The apostle Paul begins a lengthy series of commands for Christians with a simple statement: “Love must be sincere” (Romans 12:9). 
Craig T. Owens 